


And Me Without My Galoshes

by somanyopentabs



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Protectiveness, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyopentabs/pseuds/somanyopentabs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Banner isn't used to this kind of attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Me Without My Galoshes

Bruce, for the longest time, existed in the fringes, the un-spaces, the dusty corners and forgotten nooks, the veil of the ether, and the peripheries of properly mapped out geography. He stayed in places largely ignored by cartographers, tourists, and travel guides. He lived low to the land, far from everything and near to nothing, like wild clover.

He made his way along borders, along the routes where maps crease and crinkle and forget. He found his cover in the margins of communities, in places where no questions are asked, because no one wants any answers.

He hid with thoughtful efficiency, obscuring records and concealing his travel patterns so deeply it became a second nature, and then a first one.

It was a problem, when they finally found him, because he’d never wondered before, just how very good he’d gotten at hiding from himself. 

Bruce took a walk in the rain, after two months at SHIELD. He didn’t bother with an umbrella, or a raincoat, or to check if he was being followed (of course he was).

But he walked with a purpose, even if he had nowhere to go.

He passed by a warm-looking coffee shop that glowed with soft lighting and beckoned patrons inside with a chalked-sign out front whose writing had begun to melt away under the downpour.

The bookstore he’d frequented one or two times was open; he saw the owner standing out front under the awning with a cigarette pressed to her lips, checking her text messages.

He walked by a small park, empty but for the trees, branches shaking under the deluge of water while their trunks remained stoic.

Bruce wasn’t mindful of puddles; soon his socks were soaking wet. His glasses had long since become useless in the cascade of the pouring rain, and he’d tucked them away in his coat pocket.

He turned another corner, because here, there was always another corner, always another charted city block, another set of buildings and shops, another cracked sidewalk with another thoughtlessly planted tree, uprooted from some corporate nursery, no doubt, growth stifled by chemical and harsh concrete.

He turned the corner, and felt a tap on his shoulder. He stopped in his tracks and blinked the raindrops from his eyelashes to take a look at Hawkeye, who was looking near as waterlogged as Bruce felt.

“What are you doing, Dr. Banner?” Hawkeye sighed, swiping a hand over his forehead and sounding more resigned than frustrated. It never failed to surprise Bruce that one of the top SHIELD agents had been assigned to him. Surely there were other more pressing matters? But for the time being, Bruce guessed he was being given high priority on SHIELD’s watch list. It could be worse, however. Clint Barton was charming, and in the few times they’d interacted, Bruce couldn’t help the little frisson of pleasure he’d felt at being the center of the man’s attention.

“I thought when you were following someone undercover, you weren’t supposed to let them know about it,” Bruce said, ignoring the question.

“As if you didn’t already know you were being followed. What is this, your way of getting back at me? Because we’re both gonna catch a cold while we’re at this, and I don’t think Fury’s gonna be sending either one of us chicken soup.” Without him noticing at first, Hawkeye had tugged Bruce lightly over to a storefront with a canopy, getting them out of the worst of the cloudburst.

“It’s nothing to do with you personally,” Bruce offered. It wasn’t Hawkeye’s fault he’d been assigned the majority of the watch over him while he wasn’t on other assignments.

“Yeah, maybe I’d believe that if I wasn’t dripping wet in the middle of the city,” the agent answered ruefully. “Really, what are you doing?”

“I just...needed to get away. Not like that,” Bruce said quickly. “There’s so many people around now, all the time. No one purposefully goes out in a storm.”

“No one but you. And me, apparently, because I’m an idiot. I should have just stopped you at the front door.”

Bruce smiled at that, and then shivered, suddenly noticing how very cold he was, now that he’d stopped moving.

“Don’t do that,” Hawkeye said, watching Bruce with wide eyes. “You’re gonna make me feel bad for you, and it’s your own damn fault anyway.”

“I should probably get back,” Bruce admitted.

“Come on, I’ve got a car waiting around the corner.”

Bruce all but collapsed in the back seat of the standard issue black SHIELD vehicle. Hawkeye gave directions to the driver to take them back to the mansion while he arranged a shock blanket over Bruce’s quivering form.

“Thank you,” Bruce mumbled, shooting him a grateful look.

Within minutes they were back, because Bruce really hadn’t walked so far after all, and besides that, SHIELD drivers tended to ignore most traffic laws simply because they could.

“Let’s get you upstairs before Coulson shows up and wants to know why you’re sopping wet for no damn reason,” Hawkeye grumbled, but it wasn’t without affection.

Bruce barely put up a token protest as he was manhandled into the elevator. “I’m sure I can take it from here,” he said when they stopped at his floor.

The archer frowned. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Because I’m your responsibility?”

Hawkeye said nothing to that, only gently steered him from the elevator and into his room.

“You’re soaking, too,” Bruce pointed out, starting to feel a little bad that his impromptu excursion had resulted thusly.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when I get assigned to supposed geniuses who think it’s a good idea to go singing in the rain,” Hawkeye quipped. Bruce could tell he was trying to sound cross, but there was amusement belying the man’s words.

“No singing,” Bruce promised, pulling some dry clothes out of his closet and heading for the bathroom. Bruce closed the bathroom door and started the shower as he got undressed, peeling off the wet clothes and letting them slap heavily to the floor. He could deal with the mess once he was warm and dry.

He heard a knock on the door and the agent’s voice calling, “You okay in there?”

“I’m fine. Just fine!” Bruce called back, stepping into the shower and pulling the curtain closed rapidly, just in case Hawkeye decided he needed to barge in and check on him.

Black-outs didn’t happen very often for Bruce, so he didn’t recognize the dizziness he felt until it was too late.

When Bruce blinked his eyes open, the first thing he noticed was Barton staring at him concernedly.

The second thing he noticed was that he was being held upright in Barton’s heavily muscled arms, and he was still naked.

“What the hell, Bruce?” Hawkeye demanded, sounding upset and using Bruce’s first name like an extra punctuation mark.

“Sorry. I, uh, blacked out. I’m fine.”

“Jesus, Bruce. I thought you’d...”

“Can I have a towel?” Bruce asked before the conversation could get derailed while he was still very much in the nude.

“Right.” Hawkeye looked hesitant about letting him stand on his own, but he let go and found a big, fuzzy green towel to drape over Bruce’s damp limbs.

“I’m all right. Let me just get dressed and I’ll be right out, okay?” Bruce said, holding the towel self-consciously to his front.

“Oh. Yeah, sorry.”

Left alone in the small bathroom, Bruce bit his lip in lieu of letting out the groan of frustration that was welling up in his throat. He dried off and dressed quickly and haphazardly, still toweling off his hair with a small purple hand towel as he walked into the bedroom, eager to placate Barton with some reassuring words and be left alone.

What he wasn’t expecting was for the man to urge him to sit on the edge of his own bed and then snatch the towel out of his hands to finish drying his hair off with gentle efficiency. 

“I shouldn’t have been surprised,” Barton said quietly. “The blackouts are in your file, after all.”

“They don’t happen often.”

And then Barton looked at Bruce with an odd expression on his face, like he was making up his mind about something, and then he dropped a kiss onto the top of Bruce’s head, a soft brush of lips lost in the mass of Bruce’s curls.

“I’m gonna go change,” Barton said, as Bruce glanced up at him, trying to hide the mix of hope and confusion he was sure was showing in his countenance.

“And then,” Barton added, “I’m gonna bring you some chicken soup. So don’t go anywhere.”


End file.
